Trump Honors Dead Friend, Restarts War

Summary

Pod Save America: "Trump Honors Dead Friend, Restarts War"

Episode Date: July 14, 2026
Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor
Key Guest: Brian Tyler Cohen (from 57:06 onward, interview by Jon Lovett)

Episode Overview

This episode of Pod Save America centers on the latest escalation in the US-Iran conflict, the political fallout following Senator Lindsey Graham’s death, questions surrounding Mitch McConnell’s health, and Donald Trump’s growing war on the press. The hosts also analyze divisions inside the Republican Party, the culture of conspiracy on the right, and what Democrats should do if they reclaim power. The episode includes insights from Brian Tyler Cohen on the post-Trump landscape.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. US-Iran Conflict Escalates: Trump Restarts War

• [03:37-12:31] The episode opens with news that the ceasefire between the US and Iran has collapsed. President Trump notified Congress that military action has restarted, reinstated a naval blockade on Iranian ports, and declared the US “Guardian of the Hormuz Strait.”
  • The hosts joke about Trump’s branding:
    “The USA will be from this point forward known as the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Really rolls off the tongue.” – Jon Favreau [03:50]
  • Trump’s proposed 20% toll on all cargo through the strait is flagged as possibly illegal and economically risky.
  • Tommy Vietor analyzes the logistical and political challenges, predicting the plan is likely an empty threat for leverage:
    “…this is an empty threat designed to create leverage from the White House and they'll probably walk the whole thing back in a couple days. I just can't see how that this will actually get implemented.” [06:33]
  • The ceasefire’s collapse is linked to continued Iranian rocket attacks and uncertain prospects for a nuclear deal.
  • The hosts deride the plan as a “protection racket” and compare it to mafia tactics (see Sopranos reference by Jon Lovett [08:25]).

2. Congressional Dynamics: NDAA, Supplemental Bills, and Democratic Strategy

• [13:41-18:01] Democrats may have a new opportunity to oppose the war via the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and a supplemental funding bill.
  • “This is an easy no for me, but there's a lot of Democrats who I think will have a lot of muscle memory that says voting against all of the underlying things within this bill and voting against authorizing Pentagon spending is bad politics for them.” – Tommy Vietor [16:19]
  • The NDAA is described as bloated and tied to Trump's increased war funding.
  • Debate over the political risks for Democrats in breaking from automatic defense spending approvals.
  • The razor-thin Republican margins in both chambers are emphasized, with the deaths and absences of GOP senators raising procedural hurdles.

3. Lindsey Graham’s Death and Trump’s Response

• [21:10-25:57] The death of Senator Lindsey Graham triggers a political scramble.
  • Jon Favreau shares details:
    “Axios reports that a person who had spoken with Graham said the senator complained he wasn't feeling well, but didn't want to seek medical attention until after his Meet the Press appearance the next morning.” [21:49]
  • Trump’s Fox & Friends call-in tribute is widely mocked for being self-focused:
    “He would call me all the time... I'd say, stop calling me Lindsey. He was a great guy. Loved playing golf, loved being outside. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball...He wasn't exactly a perfect...Jack Nicklaus. He had one bad moment, and that was in the January 6th thing... Then he called me, like, about 40 minutes later. He said, did I really say that?” – Trump, as quoted by Brian Tyler Cohen [21:58]
  • Lovett compares Trump’s tribute to a eulogy for a dog:
    “Yeah. Which is also what you say at the funeral for a golden retriever.” – Jon Lovett [22:38]
  • The hosts dissect Graham’s legacy—highlighting his pivot from bipartisan collaborator (on climate and immigration) to Trump loyalist, ultimately ending as what Lovett calls a "sad and pathetic vassal" (25:21).
  • Discussion on Graham’s replacement, Darlene, his sister, and the future of the South Carolina Senate seat.

4. Mitch McConnell’s Health and the Era of Political Conspiracy

• [33:02-38:12] Questions ramp up after McConnell’s extended absence, with his office releasing a ‘proof of life’ photo.
  • “Part of this is...a single photo holding the day's newspaper. That's what hostage takers release to give you as little as possible.” – Jon Lovett [34:57]
  • The segment covers the rampant conspiracy theories, justified skepticism about the health of elderly politicians, and the ever-present role of AI in muddying the media (see “Zapruder film breakdowns of photos” reference).
  • Lovett and Vietor cite political intrigue around issues like the Kentucky governor’s authority to appoint a new senator and the strategic implications of absent Republican votes.

5. Congressional Dysfunction and Trump’s War on the Press

• [42:18-48:56]
  • Republican control is hampered; the party is described as a “zombie Congress.”
  • New front in Trump’s war on the press: DOJ subpoenas four NYT journalists over leaked security details about Air Force One.
    • Subpoenas were served at journalists’ homes; FBI Director Kash Patel is personally involved.
    • The process is called “just an obvious effort to punish and scare these journalists.”* – Tommy Vietor [45:46]
    • Comparison to both Obama-era leak prosecutions and the more aggressive, immediate approach from Trump’s DOJ.

6. Cyclospiriasis Outbreak & Public Health Under Trump

• [48:56-53:44]
  • Hosts discuss a widespread outbreak of cyclospiriasis (intestinal illness), linking it to Trump-era cuts to the FDA/CDC and general administrative incompetence.
  • “CDC’s lost roughly a quarter of its workforce. They stop requiring surveillance of cyclospora after it’s been tracked for decades.” – Jon Lovett [49:43]
  • Fears are raised about the long-term consequences of hollowed-out governmental agencies and decimated public health surveillance.

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Trump’s tribute to Lindsey Graham:
  “So he called me too much. He was a bad golfer. He betrayed me, then said, just kidding. And he did like being outside.” – Jon Favreau [22:29]
• On the war’s economic logic:
  “I just would add... that it’s not traditionally in the conception of Americans, the role of the US Military to be the permanent security detail for oil tankers moving through the Gulf to protect the investment of large multinational corporations in the infrastructure by which they transmit.” – Jon Lovett [07:45]
• On the endless nature of Washington compromise:
  “There was an interview... where he said, ‘I'm gonna do what Mitt Romney couldn't do, and I'm gonna do what McCain couldn't do. I'm gonna harness the magic. You know, there's a dark side to Donald Trump, but there's a magic, and I'm going to be the one to harness it.’ Right. And now he's dead, and....What'd you get for your magic? Right? Trump got everything he want.” – Jon Lovett [24:06]
• On McConnell photo skepticism:
  “You had a fall and then a mild case of pneumonia, and that's why we haven't heard anything... That to me was the weird part.” – Jon Favreau [34:48]
• Public health disaster under Trump:
  “Michael Lewis wrote that book about all the data that's being lost...refers to...longitudinal studies that were ended, all the research that was terminated. Right. Like, that's just a price we're gonna pay for a very long time.” – Jon Lovett [52:00]

---

Guest Interview: Brian Tyler Cohen with Jon Lovett ([57:06–end])

Tucker Carlson Turns on Trump ([57:40])

• Tucker’s critique of Trump as a “betrayal” to supporters is seen as positioning himself for a post-Trump right, not an act of principle.
  • “He can see how unpopular Trump is...and it's because he has defied his own campaign promises...Tucker wants to retain relevance in that base...He wants to have a longer career than what spans just Donald Trump's specific tenure in office.” – Brian Tyler Cohen [58:21]

Republican Brands: Culture Wars and Conspiracy

• The hosts discuss the mainstreaming of conspiracy thinking on the right, its role in shaping voter mobilization (e.g., Epstein files), and how failures to deliver are increasingly backfiring on Trump and the GOP.
• “What Republicans have to show for it right now is a country that is sicker, poorer, and hungrier than it's been before....We have not fewer wars, but more. The Epstein files are not released. They're being suppressed.” – Brian Tyler Cohen [66:57]

What Should Democrats Do Post-Trump?

• The Democratic Party needs to abandon excessive deference to institutional norms and act with greater boldness if they regain power.
  • “Democrats should look at what Trump's doing and use that for virtuous reasons to deliver Medicare for all...to combat climate change...expand voting rights...Our Democratic officials are not in government so that they can pay deference to the institutions of government. They're there so that they can deliver outcomes for people.” – Brian Tyler Cohen [72:32]
• Lovett adds that, while Democrats should be bolder, they still must defend the legitimacy of democracy itself.

---

Notable Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:37–12:31] – US-Iran conflict, Trump’s military brinksmanship
• [13:41–18:01] – NDAA fight in Congress, defense spending
• [21:10–29:12] – Lindsey Graham eulogized, Trump’s bizarre tribute, legacy, and South Carolina politics
• [33:02–38:12] – McConnell’s health, conspiracy culture
• [42:18–44:54] – Effect of Republican absences in Congress
• [45:02–48:56] – Trump cracks down on press, subpoenas journalists
• [48:56–53:44] – Cyclospiriasis outbreak, public health incompetence
• [57:06–80:22] – Brian Tyler Cohen interview: right-wing media, culture wars, lessons for Democrats

---

Tone & Style

• Fast-paced, conversational, irreverent, laced with pop culture metaphors (e.g., Sopranos, golden retriever eulogies, hostage photos).
• Heavy use of dark humor, with underlying seriousness about threats to democracy, the rule of law, and institutional decay.

---

Final Notes

This episode uses major news stories (Trump’s foreign policy, the deaths and absences of GOP senators, right-wing media infighting) as lenses to examine the perils of GOP rule, the shifting political landscape, and the challenge for Democrats to reclaim and wield power boldly and effectively. The hosts' blend of biting critique and wry humor delivers a comprehensive political analysis for listeners seeking context, clarity, and a push toward action.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

Today's presenting sponsor is SimpliSafe Home Security. Most home security systems wait for a smashed window or kicked in door. That's already way too late. With SimpliSafe Active Guard Outdoor Protection AI powered cameras detect outside parties and then a live agent intervenes to send them running before a break in even begins. With SimpliSafe you can customize your system to fit your needs. It's more than just a security camera. It's a comprehensive system of sensors indoor and outdoor cameras in 247 bright professional monitoring. The app guided setup is simple and there's no drilling required so you can install and arm your system in under an hour. There are no long term contracts or cancellation fees. Monitoring plans start at around a dollar a day. John Lovett set up a SimpliSafe system himself.

[Jon Lovett]

You bet I did. Very easy to do. Customized it, set it up, worked perfectly. App is great. Customer support great. Really reliable. Gives you peace of mind.

[Tommy Vietor]

Peace of mind. We want you to experience the peace of mind of real home security. Which is why we partnered with SimpliSafe to offer an exclusive discount to our listeners. For right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com crooked that's half [e-mail] crooked there's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[Ad Read Announcer]

All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon refresher and the Mango Pineapple refresher with popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six. All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

[Tommy Vietor]

Refreshers contain caffeine.

[Guest or Secondary Announcer]

Do you remember in school when your teacher had a favorite of everything? A favorite marker, a favorite element, and yes, even a favorite student who wasn't me. So let's move on. I want to talk about their real favorite Kleenex tissues. According to teacher lists, Kleenex is the number one facial tissue trusted by teachers. The they're silky soft, help prevent skin irritation. And now with Kleenex, snap and go. You can take them anywhere. Stock up on the ultimate classroom favorite for whatever happens next. Grab Kleenex.

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Dan Tabursky]

I'm Jon Levitt.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Tommy Guetor.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm back, guys.

[Tommy Vietor]

Welcome back.

[Jon Favreau]

It's good to be back.

[Tommy Vietor]

We missed you.

[Jon Favreau]

I missed you guys.

[Jon Lovett]

And you were gone.

[Jon Favreau]

I was gone. I was gone. You guys did a great job Great job holding up the fort here. On today's show, Lindsey Graham is dead and Mitch McConnell is alive. We'll talk about Graham's legacy and McConnell's proof of life photo and how the absence of both men is affecting Republicans agenda in Congress. We'll also get into Trump's latest war on the press after the White House and Kash Patel subpoenaed four New York Times journalists over their reporting on Qatari Force one and whether RFK Jr has a lid on what's become an explosive outbreak of diarrhea. Then Lovett talks.

[Jon Lovett]

Sounds like that's not about your vacation. Sort of more of a.

[Jon Favreau]

I was gonna say, see if you can help me out. Then Lovett talks to our pal Brian Tyler Cohen about his brand new book the Day after how to Wield power in a post Trump World. Fun to fantasize, I guess. Champagne problem. Okay, Brian.

[Guest or Secondary Announcer]

All right.

[Jon Favreau]

But first, let's get to the top story this week. It appears as though the ceasefire with Iran fell apart last week while I was gone. And now we're back to full scale war. RIP the MOU of Versailles. Trump officially notified Congress that military action has resumed. He also says he's reinstating the naval blockade of Iranian ports and that, quote, the USA will be from this point forward known as the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait. Really rolls off the tongue.

[Tommy Vietor]

Just say, let's guardian to the Hormuz Strait.

[Jon Lovett]

Let's hope so.

[Jon Favreau]

That's what we've always wanted to be. USA was kind of boring. What do we call it? The Guardian of the Hormuz Strait.

[Jon Lovett]

Not the first time an agreement signed at Versailles after a war ended poorly. Hopefully not as badly as the last time.

[Jon Favreau]

Good job, J.D. vance. Good job.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, really nailed it.

[Jon Favreau]

We're also apparently gonna start charging a 20% toll on all cargo that goes through the strait, according to Trump, which seems like it's a violation of international law. That's according to Marco Rubio last month.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Ticketmaster is like, why so little?

[Jon Lovett]

They're just trying to get their beaks wet. But yeah, and the Rubio isn't just like, oh, this is illegal. It would be a contagion that would sp across the globe.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Looking forward to him talking about that now. Meanwhile, Iran continues to fire off rockets at US Targets across the Middle east and openly threaten revenge on America. Not to worry. Trump's got this whole thing under control. Here he is calling into Fox and Friends this morning.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

We're going to keep the strait and we'll probably run it we'll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we'll call it the Guardian angel of the Strait and we should be reimbursed for that. Obama was the worst of all because Obama actually went to their side. Obama because, you know, he's a. Well, let's not say. Let's. Let's not say. Let's leave that for another time.

[Jon Favreau]

Muslim? Is that what he was gonna say?

[Jon Lovett]

Socialist.

[Jon Favreau]

Socialist Trader.

[Jon Lovett]

Socialist. Foreigner. Something in that vein.

[Jon Favreau]

An Ayatollah.

[Tommy Vietor]

He's such a dick.

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy, how feasible do you think it is for the US to become the guardian angel slash toll booth operator for the straight of Hormuz?

[Tommy Vietor]

Paging Curtis Lewa.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Guardian angels. Could we stand up a mission to permanently escort boats to the Stridor Hormuz? Yes, they could do a formal escort mission. It would require a lot of Navy resources. It could last a long time. Maybe permanently.

[Jon Favreau]

I was gonna say indefinitely.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, in perpetuity. Hey, another forever war, everybody. It would cost a lot of money and it would be really, really risky because again, it's a 30 kilometer choke point and Iran can hit you with drones, missiles, naval mines, God knows what else, and the whole thing unravels if one gets through. So I don't think that a permanent escort mission is going to get you back to pre war shipping traffic levels because there's like limitations on how many, you know, Navy destroyers you have. Fewer companies are going to want to try this because it is inherently more risky. And then a lot of companies are not going to pay a 20% surcharge.

[Dan Tabursky]

That's.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's a pretty big vig on the, on the shipping fee. So my guess is that this is an empty threat designed to create leverage from the White House and they'll probably walk the whole thing back in a couple days. I just can't see how that this will actually get implemented. Remember the last time Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudis were like, no, you're not using our airspace. You're not doing an escort mission. What are you even talking about? And then I saw. Did you see the New York Post reported that the White House is calling this latest operation Operation Bitch Slap.

[Jon Favreau]

No, that's. Is that a joke?

[Tommy Vietor]

No, no, that's official. Yeah, it's very Hegsethian to me. But it suggests that they viewed sort of what's happening as a. Is a time limited and temporary battle

[Jon Favreau]

with the Iranians also feels like just a way to try to get attention. It's like. It's like he's trying to act up. Hegseth and they've named all the other missions and they didn't get enough attention. So now we're just going to bitch slap.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, this was. This is someone on background, for what it's worth, but it feels hegsethevian. There's also a great Wall Street Journal piece about how there's some poorly worded language in this ceasefire MoU that's being interpreted by Iran as meaning they now control the Strait. So great work, as you said, J.D. vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Like, just big picture. It's just worth remembering this was going to be a four to five week operation to deal with Iran's nuclear program. And now we're well over four months and we're talking about how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I just would add one thing to your list of reasons that this is not a good idea. One other would be that it's not traditionally in the conception of Americans, the role of the US Military to be the permanent security detail for oil tankers moving through the Gulf to protect the investment of large multinational corporations in the infrastructure by which they trans transmit.

[Jon Favreau]

That's why we got to take a cut. Lovett. Yeah, I was just doing some math on this. 20 million barrels a day go through. Go through the strait at usually $80 a barrel. That's $320 million a day. 20% of that.

[Jon Lovett]

The. It really did remind me, Trump saying, we're going to look, we got to stop these Iranians from trying to charge a toll for people moving this straight to Hormuzzi. And as a consequence, we are going to charge a toll for moving through this trade immune. And there's this episode of Sopranos where this poor gardener is stuck between a war between Feech Lamana and Paulie Walnuts, and he just gets the ever loving shit beat out of it over at the end of it, Polly Walnuts is like, you're gonna pay me and I did you a favor, I protected you from the other guy and you're gonna have to do some lawns for free. That's Trump with this. And they're like that meme of the, you know, the, you know, our, our blessed ships. They're barbarous, their barbarous murderers. And it's like our protection services, your barbarous protection racket.

[Jon Favreau]

I saw the Iranians, one of them like tweeted out like, you know, you're right, someone needs to control that. And like. But we're going to do it for much less.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Hey, The Iranians get a better deal than Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

Let me get you into the straight for. I'll only take 10%, 20%, I'll get you through the straight and 10% stupid. It seems to me like Trump's chances of negotiating that MOU into a long term deal with Iran may have dropped precipitously over the, over the last week or so. But I don't know. What do you think, Tommy?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration thinks a nuclear deal is increasingly unlikely. I wonder why they would think that

[Jon Favreau]

if you can't get them to abide

[Tommy Vietor]

by the 60 day MOU, I don't know that you're going to get them into a more complicated nuclear deal.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I feel like when we first talked about this, we talked about the fact that there's like a fundamental problem, which is that the two circles of the Venn diagram don't overlap because Donald Trump can't accept a deal that's not demonstrably better than the Obama deal, but the only deal that will ever be on offer is one that's demonstrably worse. And everything about that MOU is about kicking the can on that fundamental problem and all the ups and downs, like the we have a deal, we have an impasse. These people are bastards we can't work with. I've never met more reliable partners. Like all of it has been a kind of high dudgeon, dramatic Trump show on top of the fundamentals, which have been terrible from the beginning.

[Tommy Vietor]

And the Trump administration was betting that they could offer Iran a bunch of economic incentives and get them to not want to go back to war. But for Iran, they're like, we just survived a war against the US And Israel. This is our moment to like assert our dominance over the entire region. And they're betting that Trump doesn't want to go back to war before the midterms. And I think they are right because Trump tells us as much all the time.

[Jon Favreau]

So Trump did, in a little interview with Tommy, your friend Hugh Hewitt.

[Tommy Vietor]

I caught that.

[Jon Favreau]

Did you see that? So Hewitt asks him, do you plan to oust the Iranian regime? And Trump says, well, I think they're a little cuckoo. They all are. To them, deals are made to be broken. They're extremely unreliable people. Hugh, was the MoU that your negotiators brought back built to fall apart?

[Jon Lovett]

What does that mean?

[Jon Favreau]

Trump? Trump says, it was built to test. It was a test. We didn't know. Look, Memorandums of Understanding, when you're dealing with sleaze bags don't mean much. It is like to your. How many times was Trump like this new group of people, they're so reasonable, we can make deals with them. JD Vance is out there being like, it's really cool for the first time in 47 years that we have all these channels to the Iranians and they just want to chat and it's just, it's been so cool.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The friends we make along the way and yeah. The hu. Setup question, it's like, is it possible, Mr. President, that things are going exactly as you planned? Why, yes, Hugh, I think they might be. I think you're right. Exactly as we planned.

[Jon Favreau]

Also, I noticed that Trump at Naito is like, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground, nobody's going to be able to get it except us. So why did we go to war in the first place? Wasn't the whole point to get the nuclear material?

[Tommy Vietor]

You're going to drive yourself crazy trying to find any sort of internal logic.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And he's calling it the nuclear dust now because it's. It's so stupid.

[Jon Favreau]

It's so stupid. It is funny that the mou, it formalized the ceasefire. That's gone. It ended the blockade. Blockade's back. Reopened the street of Hormuz closed again. Sanctions relief, oil waiver. That's gone now. And now a 60 day clock to negotiate the permanent deal. That's August 16th. We are well on our way. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff.

[Tommy Vietor]

Well done, everyone.

[Jon Favreau]

Before we move on, I kind of missed this when I was gone. The story about the Iranians, the Israelis giving the US intelligence that the Iranians are trying to kill Trump again. What's going on there?

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, yeah, well, apparently they did that. Yeah, they, the Iranians. Apparently the Israelis passed along intelligence to the US claiming that Trump was on some. There's some new effort to assassinate him. And Trump went and bragged to the press about how he's like number one on the Iranian hit list and that maybe is why he switched from the old Air Force One to the new Air Force One on the way home. We're going to talk about this later.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

But also maybe why he started bombing again. So if I were Trump, I'd be

[Jon Lovett]

pretty pissed if JD Vance keeps talking about how cool the Iranians are. Might want to stop. Last time there was that much daylight between two members of a mob family. Corleone gets shot outside that fucking orange stand. It's like, don't be a little too much daylight inside the family, guys.

[Jon Favreau]

Did make me feel too like the, like Israeli intelligence. Netanyahu is probably like, oh, you're not bombing enough lately. See, see, they're trying to kill you.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just such a mark. Like, of course they're trying to kill you, man. You killed custom Soleimani and then you bombed their country for like a month. So they like you now.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Democrats in Congress haven't really had the ability to rein in Trump and Iran, though they may have a chance. This week, Brian Schott said he's voting no on the annual defense bill known as the NDAA, citing Trump's request for a 50% increase at the Defense Department. This is separate. This is in addition to the extra 67 billion, I think, in funding that Hegsett's asking for by August in a separate supplemental bill. You guys think every Democrat will see this as an easy call, like shots?

[Jon Lovett]

No, they won't. I mean, maybe they should, but they won't first. So this is not an appropriations as an authorization. Right. So this is about how the Congress is directing money to be spent, but it doesn't actually appropriate the money. That's a separate process for reasons that make sense. If you, I don't know, read roll, roll call on the toilet. But as many, as many great Americans do. But where else are you going to read it? Right? But I wonder because. So that's similar debates in the past about holding something up that actually includes the reforms that Democrats want. Right. So there is an argument that you continue to have this pass with a huge super majority. It also raises, raises incomes for the troops, that kind of thing. It has some reforms that Democrats want.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, we should say that everything's in, everything's in there. So Ukraine, like the whole Defense Department strategy, everything for the whole year and

[Jon Lovett]

not passing it doesn't hamstring the administration to fight the war at all because it's not actually authorizing any. It's not actually appropriating any money. It's just a kind of proving how money can be spent. And then you have a fight that's coming over the supplemental, which was, which is what Hegseth really wants and Trump really wants, which is, I think to me, I look, if I were in the Senate, be voting no on fucking everything. They fought a fucking insane stupid war that's hamstringing the global economy without any kind of justification. But the appropriations is the money he needs and is the kind of the, what I would say is like the real backend authorization of the conflict.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. It seems like if you're, it seems like the reason to target this one, even over the appropriations is the, is you could probably do a supplemental. If they do this, it would be a reconciliation bill. So you only need 51 votes. And this, it seems like they need the full. This is not a 51 vote margin. This is the full. So Democrats probably, if they all banded together, they have the votes to block.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, but nothing about not passing this prevents them from doing the appropriate. Look, I'm just that this is, this is something that traditionally passes like 80, 20, which is a, like, you know, a huge majority because it's for kind of the broad support of the military and all kinds of rules that they've been trying to fight for.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think the stat is like the Congress has passed an NDA every year for I think 60 plus years. So this is usually a thing they get done in a bipartisan fashion. I do like this authorizes 1.15 trillion. I think there's going to be another request for up to 350 billion. So for 1.5 trillion total, which is what Trump wants. That's what Trump wants, which is an insane amount of Money. There's a 42% increase on current levels, which is just not necessary or justified or inner interest. And there was some polling that a recent poll found 60% of Americans think that that budget request is too high. And majorities think the Iran war was dumb and unnecessary and they probably won't be thrilled if they were to learn that it's ramping back up again. So I like, this is an easy no for me, but there's a lot of Democrats who I think will have a lot of muscle memory that says voting against all of the underlying things within this bill and voting against authorizing Pentagon spending is bad politics for them. Again, I think that's a dated view of politics in the world, but I think that's why you'll see majorities vote for it.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, there's a view among some, I'm sure, that it's bad politics for sort of the reasons you're getting at, which is like weak on national security, not supporting the troops. There's also like a bad local politics angle. Like Slotkin was asked about it and she said, oh, it's a tough vote specifically because it includes like, you know, money for a new hangar at Selfridge Air National Guard Base. So you can imagine that there's a number of Democrats like that. But I do think, look, I think it's, it's, it's meaningful that shots who's you know, in line to be in leadership here is is saying that he's voting no and that they voted, the Democrats voted no in committee. So I don't know. I think at this point Trump is continuing to fight this war and nothing is stopping him and you might as well throw everything you have at it if you're in Congress to try to put roadblocks up or at least raise

[Tommy Vietor]

attention in a way.

[Jon Lovett]

Absolutely. Pod Save America is brought to you by Armor Colostrum. When you prioritize your body's baseline, you're better equipped to show up with focus and energy no matter what the day holds. Armor Colostrum is a simple, nature inspired addition to your daily wellness routine. While many turn to probiotics for gut support, they often only focus on one part of a complex system. Armor Colostrum works differently for providing comprehensive nourishment for your gut's natural barrier. It's designed to help sustain your microbiome and support your body's natural defenses against the stressors of modern life. Elevate your self care from the inside out. Armor Colostrum provides a blueprint of nutrients that complement your body's natural renewal processes. From supporting skin and hair vibrancy to assisting with daily recovery. It's the ultimate tool for those looking to optimize their well being at the cellular level. Researchers have shown that colostrum can be a powerful ally for your active life. It supports the body's natural ability to absorb nutrients and maintain lean. Musc worked out a special offer for our audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription. Go to armor.com crooked or enter crooked to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's a RM.com crooked pod Save America

[Tommy Vietor]

is brought to you by Bombas. Summer is here and we are living for life outdoors. Got days at the beach, soccer games, going to soccer games. You're watching soccer games.

[Jon Lovett]

Ever do Here we go rucking Tommy, you ever do any rucking? You should do you ruck. What's a rucking ruck? It's when you just wear a rucks that just heavy. Wear something heavy and walk around.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

It's great.

[Jon Lovett]

I love it. It's a.

[Tommy Vietor]

That seems like a fun thing to do. We could do some parkour. Yeah. When that was a thing. When planking was a thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, well planking still. Yeah, well plank. I guess people were just doing it in public places than to falling off of things. But we don't do that in your bomb.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, don't do that. You know it's great with Bombus Everything Everything so super comfortable makes your comfiest summer staple so you can make the most out of your summer plants. They've got a whole line of pro level sports specific socks. I'm wear them every day almost for golf, yoga, the gym and every kind of runner. Plus they're airy sweat wicking. My feet feel good at the end of the day as they did at the start. They also make the best soft and supportive compression socks. Perfect for all your summer travel. The thing about compression socks is normally they've got like a hospital vibe to them, but Bombas do not. They keep your legs feeling fresh on a long flight, but they also look cool. They come in vibrant summer colors. Do you know what EVA stands for?

[Jon Lovett]

I don't.

[Tommy Vietor]

Neither do I. I just know that Bombas makes their sandals and slides from the super lightweight, cushy waterproof EVA foam. It's like walking on marshmallows if that's the kind of thing you're into I

[Jon Lovett]

was wearing my Bombas Friday slides over the weekend, July 4th and I said out loud I'm not wearing any other kinds of this was not part of an ad. I'm not wearing any other kinds of flip flops. These are my slide sandals. I'm only wearing.

[Jon Favreau]

You're just doing irl.

[Jon Lovett]

I was. I was doing an endorse host endorsed Read in the World by the Pool

[Tommy Vietor]

and for every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated. With over 200 million donations and counting. Head over to bombas.com crooked use code crooked for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com crooked code crooked at checkout

[Jon Favreau]

so Republicans will have a tougher time passing anything through the Senate right now since they're currently dealing with two absences Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly over the weekend, and Mitch McConnell, who is apparently still very much alive. Graham was 71 and died Saturday night from what's being reported as an aortic dissection. Axios reports that a person who had spoken with Graham said the senator complained he wasn't feeling well, but didn't want to seek medical attention until after his Meet the Press appearance the next morning. Graham apparently joked, quote, I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli Saudi normalization. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has appointed Graham's sister Darlene to serve out the remaining months of his term. He was up this November and Trump of course, offered a touching tribute to the senator during his Fox and Friends foner, as one does.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

He was a friend. He would call me all the time. He just. I'd say, stop calling me Lindsey. He was a great guy. Loved. Loved playing golf, loved being outside. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball. It was. He wasn't exactly a perfect. He wasn't Jack Nicklaus. He was not Tiger. Now, he had one bad moment, and that was, you know, in the January 6th thing, when he stood up. All right, now I've had it. That's it. I can't do it anymore. Then he called me, like, about 40 minutes later. He said, did I really say that? I can't believe it.

[Jon Favreau]

So he called me too much. He was a bad golfer. He betrayed me, then said, just kidding. And he did like being outside.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Which is also what you say at

[Tommy Vietor]

the funeral for a golden retriever.

[Jon Lovett]

Love the ball. Loved being outside.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's just incredible.

[Jon Favreau]

You lose someone, bark too much. Kept me up at night.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. But a sweetheart, in the end, very loyal.

[Tommy Vietor]

A guy who is seemingly Donald Trump's best friend in Congress dies, and he calls into Fox News, and he just can't help but make it entirely about himself. I mean, it's not surprising in any way. It's just. It's a reminder of who he is.

[Jon Favreau]

Lindsey Graham's legacy. What will it be?

[Jon Lovett]

How about it? So I remember when I was working for Hillary Clinton, she had just come back from a trip to the Arctic with Sinbad. With no Sinbad, I don't believe he was on that trip with Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Susan Collins. And that was at a time when Lindsey Graham was vociferous around climate change. He was trying to figure out how to get the GOP to change. On climate change, he did a cap and trade bill with John Kerry. And then you fast forward to Donald Trump being president, and he's trying to claw back the Inflation Reduction act money that went towards electric vehicles. On immigration, he works with Ted Kennedy to write a comprehensive immigration bill. He is a staunch advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Then you fast forward to the Trump era. He is not only against any kind of comprehensive proposal, he's against helping the dreamers. And he comes out in favor of ending birthright citizenship and obviously supports Donald Trump and his draconian immigration policy. And so you look at. There was an interview that I thought was revealing where he said, I'm gonna do what Mitt Romney couldn't do, and I'm gonna do what McCain couldn't do. I'm gonna harness the magic. You know, there's a dark side to Donald Trump, but there's a magic, and I'm going to be the one to harness it. Right. And now he's dead, and you look and say, well, what did you harness exactly? What'd you harness? What'd you get for your magic? Right. Trump got everything he want. Right. He got his immigration policies. He abandoned any kind of effort to tackle climate change. I suppose you got a war with Iran. Maybe there's an argument that you've slowed the abandonment of NATO, but here we are, and he's threatening Greenland. You're begging him to do what he can for Ukraine, which his heart is not in. So Lindsey Graham sold his soul to try, I think, to stay relevant, and then generously, I think, to try to turn Donald Trump away from his, quote, dark side. And the end result is Lindsey Graham is the one who became a kind of sad and pathetic vassal.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think it's a cautionary tale about what happens if you're in D.C. too long and you get caught up and, like, care about the wrong stuff. And, like.

[Jon Lovett]

Like, I don't.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know. Lindsey Grabb. I've never met him. People say he was nice and charming and kind. Like, he was nice to his. His sister, who's. Their parents passed away. He raised his sister right there, who we love.

[Jon Lovett]

We love Darlene, and we think Darlene has incredible judgment, and she's coming in. It's a hard job. But this is somebody who has her. Her own head on her shoulders, and she's not gonna get bullied by a bunch of these Republicans and Donald Trump. She's gonna do what she knows is right for the people in North Carolina.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't think that helps saying that

[Tommy Vietor]

out lo hoping she's a secret liberal. Wouldn't that be funny if she was just a secret liberal?

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, it would be a great twist came in.

[Tommy Vietor]

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, like, there's people who think that he is kind of like a throwback to a better and more collegial time in D.C. and maybe that's true, I guess. But, like, I think the defining quote about Lindsey Graham is what he said to Mark Leibovich in 2019 in this new York Times Magazine piece, because Mark is pressing him, like, how do you go from being Trump's biggest hater to, like, desperate to be in his inner circle? And Graham says to try to be relevant. And he also said, I've never been Called this much by a president in my life. It's weird and it's flattering and it creates some upper tin. And I just, I found that to be so sad because this is a man who, over the course of his career, he credit for honesty, but he went from being defined. He defined relevance for himself as first being John McCain's sidekick and then being Donald Trump's sidekick. And he just didn't care about the cognitive dissidents that came along with the two or the vile things that Trump said about his best friend. And I mean, love it. I thought you ticked through all, like, the policy area as well. Like, the thing it seems like he got policy wise was a war with Iran. So congrats on that. But, like, you know, the other thing he thinks, he seems to be excited that he got was 63 appearances on Meet the Press, and there would have been a 64th. 64th this Sunday. And that's such an ephemeral definition of relevance, but it's also such an indictment of the D.C. establishment press that this man is a fixture on these shows because he's primarily booked on these shows to advocate for starting a war somewhere. And so, you know, look, I'm not attacking him personally, but I think it's like, what, you don't want to be in Washington. You know, you want to stand for something, you want to be care about something. You want to do something for people and not just be relevant.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I mean, people's motivations are complex. And when you talk about to a reporter, like he did about wanting to stay relevant, the generous interpretation there is, Donald Trump is the president, and this is where my party is. And so I'm gonna try to be relevant to sort of get my policy preferences, you know, move forward in any way that I can. There's also the less generous reading of staying relevant is like, I wanna be in the mix. I like being close to power. And, you know, Peter Baker had a story about him as well, and he recalls running into Graham outside of a restaurant in D.C. and Graham was on the phone with Trump at that point. And he gets off the phone and he says to Peter about Trump, he's a lying motherfucker. Mr. Graham allowed with a shrug, but also said, quote, a lot of fun to hang out with. Mr. Trump, he said, was so dominant within the party that he could do almost anything with impunity. Quote, he could kill 50 people on our side and it wouldn't matter. Mr. Graham observed, Honestly, that is a pretty accurate, honest assessment of Donald Trump. And Lindsey Graham's relationship with Donald Trump, which is he's a lying motherfucker. But I'm sure Graham had a lot

[Tommy Vietor]

of fun, but he takes me golfing,

[Jon Favreau]

hanging out with him.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, that's literally what it is.

[Jon Favreau]

And that was, by the way, you know, this story mentions this as well, that, like, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, you know, had a falling out over this towards the end of John McCain's life. And John McCain was like, why do you have to golf so much with him? Like, I get. I get why you might want to be trying to, like, push him in the right direction here and there. And this is the first term, of course, he's like, but why are you golfing so much with him? And, you know, that was sort of a sad falling out, maybe a little

[Jon Lovett]

jealous, you know, like, oh, you've made new friends at college, you know, and now you're not hanging out with the old crew.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

It.

[Tommy Vietor]

It just speaks to the power of personal politics. And, like, he's nice to me. There's a lot of people that know better about Donald Trump who are smart, who know he's doing bad things for the country, who are, like, offended by ICE raids or whatever, but are like, well, he was nice to me that one time. And I think, you know, it's like,

[Jon Favreau]

of course, like, I believe that Donald Trump can be unbelievably charming to people.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I get it. I've fallen for that myself, you know, but just, it's.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, the thing about Trump, too. Like, John Thune gave a speech, was clearly, like, surprised and devastated by the loss of Lindsey Graham. People that like Lindsey Graham, really like Lindsey Graham, charming, funny. That kind of politics is hard in an era when someone like Trump is president. And it's like, beyond just the way in which he kind of flipped on Trump, the kind of politics he seemed to like, which was personal and kind of making deals and joking around. Right. Like, it is a democratic practice, but when one of the people you're working with attacks the legitimacy of the other party, undermines democracy, is, like, hostile to, like, tries to prosecute his enemies. Like, the jokes don't work. It doesn't make sense anymore. Like, the kind. The thing that you think you're doing, you're actually not doing anymore because you're practicing, I do think, like, genuinely, like, practicing what you view as the best way you do democracy with a collaborator who actually doesn't believe in it at all. And all the people lamenting the end of the era, like, the era of John McCain and Lindsey Graham and that kind of, I don't know, like raucous bipartisanship where you mixed it up and argued. And then Lindsey Graham writes the tribute to Hillary Clinton in Time magazine. If that's the kind of politics you're wanting, then the enemy of it is Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

So Graham's sister Darlene will only temporarily fill the seat. South Carolina will hold a Republican primary this August to determine who will face Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews this November. You guys think this is still a safe seat for Republicans no matter who wins the primary? Or would anyone like to argue that Dems have an outside shot here?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, in such an anti establishment year, I guess you always have an outside shot. I don't know what that candidate looks like, you know, like a hardcore, like, burn down, both parties suck kind of thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Trump wins South Carolina by 18 points. Graham won against Jaime Harrison by 10 points.

[Jon Favreau]

10 points.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. The swing in some of these off cycle elections has been around 13 points. So is it hard? Absolutely. Is it impossible?

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

No.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

It depends on who the person is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. So there are names that have been floated. Nancy Mace, who just had a stellar performance in the gubernatorial primary.

[Jon Lovett]

I love her posting. Just when I thought they thought I was out, they pull me back in. Nobody's pulling you anywhere. You are, nobody wants you.

[Jon Favreau]

The algorithm has pulled you back.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's like they've like, oh, right,

[Jon Lovett]

fine, I'll do it.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, no, no, no.

[Jon Lovett]

They.

[Tommy Vietor]

The Russians.

[Jon Favreau]

Ralph Norman.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Cuckoo.

[Jon Favreau]

Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson now seen as the elder statesman.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

I was just about to say that. The guy who screamed you lie at Barack OB. Lt. Governor Pamela Yvette. All these have been floated. Yeah. Cook rates it as a solid R. And the case for Andrews is she is a real candidate. She's a Charleston pediatrician. She's raised $8 million, $3 million cash on hand. She was actually out raising Lindsey Graham's campaign. And so enough of a shift, you get a really kooky Republican nominee. Who knows? But yeah, outside shot.

[Jon Lovett]

Lindsey Graham left quite a hole.

[Jon Favreau]

So close. So close. We almost got out of this. We should also talk about McConnell, who offered a proof of life photo as an attempt to finally quiet the rumors that he was dead or incapacitated after being rushed to the hospital following a collapse at his home on June 14. On Sunday, McConnell released a statement from himself and his physician who stated that his prolonged hospital stay was the result of a fall associated with his post polio condition and that he was also being treated for a mild case of pneumonia. There was also A photo of McConnell sitting in a hospital bed holding the Sunday sports section of the Washington Post alongside his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. You guys will be shocked to learn that many in the poster community are falsely claiming that the photo was reused from 2023 or AI generated. One person who decided to buy that was Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson.

[Tommy Vietor]

Can't believe they got Ron.

[Jon Favreau]

Who gave in, who gave an interview today saying, I just heard from a source that was an older photo. His source was Brock.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Who's your source?

[Tommy Vietor]

You know, as a tweet that got texted to him, of course.

[Jon Favreau]

What have you guys made of the fact that so many people online, left and right and the US Senate are convinced that a very alive Mitch McConnell is not alive?

[Jon Lovett]

I watched a video of someone analyzing the shirt collar. Did you watch? I watched a video analyzing. Well, I know I'm not buying it.

[Tommy Vietor]

I just was.

[Jon Lovett]

I was sort of interested in what the theory is of least change over here. And like that.

[Jon Favreau]

It's more just how you're spending your time.

[Jon Lovett]

The shirt was like, kind of folded in the same way as another photo from the past and that it was sort of brought in. I don't totally buy the theory. It did look like it was different to me.

[Tommy Vietor]

It is weird that we're doing like, Zapruder film breakdowns of photos in the videos that CNN posted.

[Jon Lovett]

Well, here's the thing.

[Jon Favreau]

The reason that is just like the. It was you had a fall and then a mild case of pneumonia, and that's why we haven't heard anything for the last. That's that. That to me was the weird part.

[Jon Lovett]

And then. And no, there wasn't cardiac arrest. Even though there's like a lot of reporting about the audio from the dispatch in which you were found in cardiac arrest and unconscious and resuscitated before being brought to the hospital. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was somebody else in that house. But, like, part of this is he's a single photo holding the day's newspaper. That's what hostage takers release to give you as little as possible. Right. Like, oh, you're the state. The test for a senator is not, are you alive? Right. Like, yes, that's a bare minimum. But not sufficient. But not sufficient. So perhaps a video might be helpful. So of course there's gonna be a lot of speculation, especially when a lot of old politicians have been shown to be lying about their health and hiding how sick they are over and over and over again. Jill Biden saying she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke. A Lot of reporting about the concealing of how he was aging. Mitch McConnell disappeared for three fucking weeks. They were rolling Dianne Feinstein to the Senate after she was no longer copus mentis. So, yeah, people are suspicious when they're told that an aging politician is fine. Like, there's a conspiratorial mindset on the Internet. There is obviously paranoia on the Internet. It flourishes there. But it is, I think, not unreasonable to be skeptical when you hear from politicians that they're ancient and fine.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and I think some podcast I was listening to on vacation, maybe it was this one you guys talked about

[Jon Lovett]

the I don't listen when I'm on vacation voice.

[Jon Favreau]

A few things I wanted to catch up on. There's also political implications, which I think

[Jon Lovett]

fueled the conspiracy theories.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. Which is. And I believe that It's. It was August 3rd or 4th.

[Tommy Vietor]

August 3rd.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

That, like, they were worried that maybe Thomas Massie would jump into a race as an independent and then tilt the race to the Democrats. And so there's some kind of machinations there.

[Tommy Vietor]

And BTC was floating the theory to me that there was concern that Andy Bashir might run and could actually win the seed. Now, I had not heard that until I talked to btc, but I like it. Brian Tyler Cohen.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, if they're not on the lingo. And then Andy Beshear was also saying that he is going to challenge the constitutionality of the Kentucky law that says he can't appoint placement because he believes that the constitution of the state is clear and that the law violates it. I was also, like. Also the implications of what would happen in a Senate for just those several weeks where they're losing a vote. You have Tillis. And even with whether McConnell. McConnell is absent regardless, right now, the four people like Cornyn, Tillis, Collins and Murkowski, if the Graham seat is filled and McConnell is back, those four can lead to a tie. Right. But if they all vote no right now, they can really kind of gum up the works.

[Jon Favreau]

And the Graham seat is filled tomorrow.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, the Graham seat's full.

[Jon Favreau]

That's not happening Tuesday. I think it's supposed to be filled on Wednesday.

[Jon Lovett]

But you start to think about what would happen in a lame duck if there's a Supreme Court vacancy. Oh, yeah, right. Like, that to me, is where they're

[Jon Favreau]

like, oh, gotta, gotta get that McConnell. Gotta get that proof of life.

[Tommy Vietor]

I also think, like, everyone thinks every photo is AI.

[Jon Favreau]

Now, that's.

[Tommy Vietor]

I sent my friend a photo of Erling Holland with a stuffed raccoon holding a telo bottle and he asked me if it was real. So thanks for that. Fucking Sam Altman.

[Jon Favreau]

Every funny photo I laugh at now I do the same thing. I'm like, is it real? Is it AI?

[Jon Lovett]

And the liar's dividend.

[Jon Favreau]

Even the AI checkers now when they're like. So they do that on some of like the, the writing, you know, they're like, oh, 80% that this was written by AI. And you're like, was it. Is that right?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's.

[Jon Favreau]

Is that lying?

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, and if we're just. Let's be harsh. Like, this is 100% Mitch McConnell's office's fault. Like, their boss went into the hospital on June 14. They didn't offer any real information for weeks. And then they did this weird leak to the worst liar and asshole on cnn, Scott Jennings, and had him claim that he'd just done a 20 minute call with Mitch McConnell where they talked

[Jon Favreau]

about NATO and Iran. That was the funniest aspect of this whole story for me. Not the conspiracies, the like. And was saying the same thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Or we also said the same.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, because it's like, oh my gosh, they're talking pneumonia. You're in the hospital. Quick, let's talk about the straight of Hormuz. It was like a head of state

[Tommy Vietor]

readout that you would do from the

[Jon Lovett]

White House and also by the leaders.

[Tommy Vietor]

Talked about the following issues.

[Jon Lovett]

One of the topics that came up in both their conversations, according to these reports, was the Graham Platner story. And it's like, so you've, you're talking to Mitch McConnell. You say he's your friend. You identify him as Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senators. If we were thinking you were talking about somebody else. You think he might be dying. Your last conversation is going to be about Graham Platner.

[Jon Favreau]

You know what, before we throw too many stones from our glass house, I'm just envisioning one of you guys in the hospital and me trying to call.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, we pivot pretty quick.

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy, how's it going? How's your family? Did I miss anything in the news? What's happening on Twitter?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And you'd be like, you don't want

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

to know about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's actually worse out here than in there.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

We would, though.

[Jon Favreau]

We would probably joke about.

[Tommy Vietor]

We don't, we don't talk in the phone.

[Jon Lovett]

I don't.

[Tommy Vietor]

I haven't answered my phone since 2013.

[Jon Lovett]

You guys aren't phone friends.

[Jon Favreau]

If you guys are in the hospital, maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Yeah. No, the Republican text me.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't want to take a call.

[Jon Favreau]

That's true. That's true. Okay, I'm up.

[Tommy Vietor]

Thank you.

[Jon Favreau]

Noted.

[Dan Tabursky]

Hey, Dan Tabursky here. I'm a podcast host, a journalist, and now with my newest project, the author of my own manifesto. Well, it's a manifesto about manifestos, my search for inspiration in a world that feels more infuriating, more out of its freaking mind with each passing hour. Manifestos are a call to action, an artful scream. They capture our anger and they try to do something with it. This is my attempt to take the manifesto back from mass shooters and nihilists and return it to its rightful place with the warriors, the visionaries, the regular folks with just the right amount of crazy. I compare notes with radicals, secessionists, Internet trolls out for a laugh, and punk singers screaming their guts out, all trying to turn their anger into the world they want to see. Listen to manifesto wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Manifesto early and ad free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple podcasts.

[Jon Lovett]

Pod Save America is brought to you by blinds.com there's a version of your home you haven't lived in yet. Where the light behaves just as you want. Where the rooms feel finished. Where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Not when the sun does. Blinds.com has spent 30 years making it easy to find the perfect fit. With over 25 million windows covered and 50,000 five star reviews, you can feel confident you're in good hands. Whether you want to go full diy, bring in a licensed invented pro to handle the measured install or land somewhere in between. You're always in control. Need help picking the right style? Book a free consultation with one of Blinds.com's award winning design experts. Leaving ship samples to your door fasted free. Choose from a huge variety of style options at prices that fit any budget. Everything is backed by blinds.com's 100% satisfaction guarantee. [e-mail] the only thing they treat better than windows is you. I love blinds.com we got blinds.com in our office. They came in, they installed it. Now there's shade in the afternoon when the sun comes through because we got this corner office that gets incredible light. It sucks. Anyway, we love blinds.com right now blinds.com is giving our listeners an exclusive $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Just use code crooked at checkout. Limited time offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details.

[Jon Favreau]

The Republican Congress does have quite a to do list though. They've got the Todd Blanche confirmation, AG confirmation. They've got Jay Clayton for dni, the NDAA that we just talked about, the Iran war supplemental fisa, the whole FISA thing that we talked about before the break that still hasn't been renewed.

[Jon Lovett]

I think Todd Blanche is in trouble.

[Tommy Vietor]

I hope so.

[Jon Favreau]

I think Todd Blanche is in trouble. He's supposed to have a hearing this week. We'll see if it continues. But like a number of questions swirling. We're going to talk about the war against the press next. But there's that there's, even though it's dhs, there's now been two other ICE killings we haven't even talked about. There's a man in Houston that ICE killed. And now just today as we're recording on Monday in Bitterford, Maine where I just was, there was a, it seems like a 26 year old Colombian man who had complete authorization to work in this country and was shot and killed. And the warrant that ICE had was not even for him apparently. And so I would imagine and hope that Todd Blanch at DOJ would get plenty of questions about what kind of investigation they're going to lead into these killings. Susan Collins just said that, you know, the DHS Inspector General out of Boston is going to like take over the investigation internally. But I don't really have a lot of faith in an internal DHS investigation

[Tommy Vietor]

which is a report that they'll bury.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, right. It feels like the DOJ or it feels like the FBI has to get involved.

[Tommy Vietor]

But again, Thomphyllis needs to just decide to like, like man up and fight this terrible appointment and care about stuff. I mean like he says things occasionally that are helpful and he's critical of Trump but like use your power while you can, dude. Also, with McConnell gone, I think that eliminates their one seat majority on the appropr committee. Yes. And they can't schedule hearings and it might impact the supplemental funding requests for more Pentagon spending or something more broadly. It's just like it's a reminder that the margins in the Senate and the House are so thin that you have one death or one prolonged absence or one something. It can just like completely hamstring the party in power.

[Jon Favreau]

I gotta say I think that supplemental is never getting through. I think that not for the election. Even though that's 50, only 51 votes. Like you have Collins, Husted in Ohio and Sullivan in Alaska who are all facing very tough reelections. You can't let all three of them go, he's also. And then you have Murkowski who just, you know, just out of principle, imagine that I wanted to do it, but that's, that's four Republicans on a supplemental to, to vote for more money for war. And then maybe you get Fetterman.

[Jon Lovett]

But also, like the, the House is tricky. The House is tricky. There was a, even the Republicans internally are calling it a, a zombie Congress.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Now.

[Jon Lovett]

They just, there's, they have no margins, they have no. And, and they're all angry and they're all mad at each other, too. They're not, this is not like a, a well run machine here.

[Jon Favreau]

Let's talk about the latest front in Trump's war on the press. Late on Friday, the administration issued subpoenas to four New York Times journalists who reported that the White House, at the urging of the Secret Service, had decided to use the old Air Force One during the NATO summit in Turkey as a security precaution. FBI Director Cash Patel, who spent eight hours working from the White House on Friday, has been tasked with overseeing the investigation. The Times, Senate Democrats and press advocacy groups have all criticized the move, which came through the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Jay Clayton, who's also Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence. The DOJ wrote on Twitter on Saturday that, quote, every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information, adding, quote, reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are. What did you guys make of this one?

[Tommy Vietor]

This is just an obvious effort to punish and scare these journalists because a normal leak investigation would figure out who in the government had access the information. They tried to narrow it down and attempt to find the leaker that way. But instead they sent a bunch of federal agents to the homes of these reporters on Friday night. And they were like, show up to a grand jury on Wednesday. That's not the normal process. Also, the FBI, there's a weird anecdote in the story about how the FBI was the one warning the reporters not to publish in advance. I don't know why they would be the ones or asking them not to publish in advance for security reasons. And as you mentioned, like, Kash Patel gets summoned. He was going to fly to Chicago to see his girlfriend perform at a country concert. Every story notes that it's in the parking lot of some venue, which is very funny. But instead, poor Cash couldn't go to Chicago. He worked out of the White House for eight hours, apparently constantly updating the White House staff on this investigation into these journalists and coordinating with them. And so it's so obvious that he's trying to. They're trying to punish this reporting. Apparently, Trump was very mad about the reports about Air Force One. On some level, you can step back and be like, okay, reporting on security measures embedded in Air Force One. Like, there is a risk there. But everyone knew about this. Like, this was sort of like the conversation about the Qatari gifted Air Force One in advance was that you couldn't put in place these countermeasures, specifically the missile defense stuff, in time for Trump to use it.

[Jon Favreau]

But that was reported before.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's what happened. I mean, that was the assumption was that piece of. Whatever countermeasures it had would be the hardest and take the longest.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. And so if we already. Everyone was speculating, once he wasn't taking that plane back, there's gonna be reporting on why. If the why is security. If Trump is. Trump is pissed now that he won't be able to use the plane because now the secret's out on the fact that the plane isn't as secure as the original ones. That took a decade to build.

[Jon Favreau]

Just another lesson. Buy American, you know, for sure.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. And then the DOJ putting out this statement saying, oh, a lot of classified leaks have often been investigating, which seems to be confirming the story. Right. Because they're now saying. So there was.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, every leak investigation kind of confirms the underlying reporting.

[Jon Favreau]

But.

[Jon Lovett]

Yes, but also, like, they're trying to say, oh, well, we're just doing this sort of normal course of investigating a leak. But as Tommy said, the sort of. The operations reverse. But also, there is an understanding that if you're trying to get information from journalists who are covering that, that is a serious thing to do. Garland put in place protections for journalists to protect against this exact kind of thing. Pam Bondi rescinded those protections.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. I mean, going after the journalists, subpoenaing the journalists 48 hours after the story is just. Just completely backwards. Just for all the people to be like, oh, Obama, the Obama administration did this and other administrations, it's usually the last resort is to subpoena a journalist if you absolutely have to. You don't start the investigation that way unless you just want to intimidate people.

[Tommy Vietor]

And, like, half of the leak investigations under Obama were holdovers from the Bush administration. Like, there's all these caveats to this. Look, I understand the criticism of it, but anyway, yes, it's not comparative. It's just really. They're not the same in any way. What happened then and now.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, one more explosive piece of news before we get to Lovett's interview with Brian Tyler Cohen. The country is currently experiencing a cyclospiriasis outbreak, a parasite that causes severe intestinal illness and diarrhea. Cases have been found in over half the states in the country, including over 2,500 cases in Michigan alone. While cases of the intestinal illness tend to rise in spring and summer of every year, this year's outbreak has been particularly extreme, raising questions about how the administration's cuts to the FDA and CDC may be affecting the federal response. Nicolas Florco at the Atlantic pointed out that as of Friday, CDC's case tracker of the outbreak had not been updated, reporting less than 200 cases, an obvious undercount. Just Michigan alone has more than that. My only question, is RFK Jr at fault for America getting explosive diarrhea?

[Jon Lovett]

I think the question is worth asking. I think. We don't know, but CDC's lost roughly a quarter of its workforce. They stop requiring surveillance of cyclospora after it's been tracked for decades.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, one of the ones that it cut one of the pathogens that they were tracking in the budget cuts.

[Jon Lovett]

And it's also just hard to measure the cost of having, like, just incompetent boobs at the top of all of these agencies. Like, there's a lot of. There's a lot of just dogs that aren't barking, right? The kind of thing, like serious professionals. Right. Because they're. Yeah, they're. They're sort of in a permanent squat. You know, when your dog has that, you know, dog sort of has that. Those long poops, you know, they're just. You know what I mean? They're like walking across the lawn because they're just in poop position for a long time. That's Michigan right now. That's pure Michigan. They're not even having. There's no lettuce and tomato on the Taco Bell supreme anymore. That's what this country used to be. That's what Thomas Trump has done.

[Tommy Vietor]

I was reading about this in the Wall Street Journal and then. Sure you were. The following sentence was, she went to her local Taco Bell on July 7, and by the next. The next day, her stomach was upset.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm like, dog bites me.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. I think I've had it since I was 17.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

It's just.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, my reaction to this was.

[Jon Favreau]

Was.

[Tommy Vietor]

Was what you said.

[Jon Favreau]

Love it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, what are. What disease are we not tracking because of Doge.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, my God.

[Tommy Vietor]

Because RFK thinks vaccines are causing it. Like, God help us. All still a screw. Screw worm on the border. Yeah, there's a, there's a worm eating cows in Texas. Feels like that should be a bigger deal also. I mean, I was at the farmer's market this weekend. We didn't buy like raspberries because Hannah had seen something somewhere that said raspberries might have it. I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

Scary.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sucks.

[Jon Favreau]

Not to get darker about this, but this for me goes into the category of like the high class problem that Brian writes about in his book after Trump. How do we will power? Like, public health agencies have been so decimated under Trump. And this is the true with almost every agency across government. It's like, I don't think people understand that when they leave and a new administration comes in, it's going to be incredibly difficult to replace all of these experts and officials because you can't just like, people got other jobs. You can't just call up everyone that Trump fired and who had been, who held this expertise for decades and be like, oh, yeah, can you come back? Now he's got new jobs. And so Michael Lewis wrote that book

[Jon Lovett]

about all the data that's being lost, or there's a section of that book about the federal government that talked about all the data and that is not being tracked. Or the longitudinal studies that were ended, all the research that was terminated. Right. Like, that's just a price we're gonna pay for a very long time.

[Tommy Vietor]

And all the investment to MRNA vaccines and other things that could provide the, like, game changing, you know, cures of the future.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And I think the next administration's probably just gonna have to be honest about the hole that we're gonna have to dig ourselves out of, because there's a political issue with that too, where suddenly there's an outbreak and, you know, the next Democratic president or the CDC officials, like, well, we were hamstrung by all the cuts in the Trump administration. No one's gonna be like, okay, no, don't worry about that. We understand.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, look, we spent all, like, there's so many ways in which what we're talking about are all the kind of offensive, like, not morally offensive, but, you know, proactively offensive ways in which Donald Trump is, you know, destroying institutions and wrecking the government and, you know, focused on the wrong things. But I remember when we were working on some speech about some unrelated topic and there was a fear about swine flu. And so there was a meeting and it was, we're going to. It rose to the level of the president and then he Gave a brief Topper at some speech. Swine flu Topper. Swine flu Topper. And it ran through what the latest he learned from the agencies and what people needed to know. And that did two things. One, it informed the public about an ongoing public health threat. And whenever the president speaks to something, it is an organizing force inside the government, gets people to attend to something, figure out what they're doing, explain what they're not doing, what's happening. And none of that happens when Donald Trump as president. None of it. And there's just a. Like, it's a hard to measure price because it's the cost of incompetence that just shows up in people being sick after you go to Taco Bell.

[Tommy Vietor]

I think everyone here has been quite sober and serious in talking about Senator Graham and not talking about all the jokes that were being made on Twitter over the weekend. But I didn't need to read one, which was from lol gop which just said they have to move the dead senators quickly so Bobby Jr doesn't try to eat them.

[Jon Favreau]

Tommy, as we were talking about this, I was thinking to myself, can I read that tweet? Is it too much? No, and I'm glad you did.

[Tommy Vietor]

I got you.

[Jon Lovett]

Thank you.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm glad you did. I'm glad I got out of the podcast. It was a good one. That's a good place to leave it. And do you think he was gay? Okay.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

No.

[Jon Lovett]

I. I think probably. But we'll never know now. Doesn't matter. It never mattered in the end.

[Jon Favreau]

It never mattered. Never mattered.

[Jon Lovett]

You see that? Trump ordered all flags in the United States to half. Half staff. And I know this is my only thing.

[Ad Read Announcer]

This is.

[Jon Lovett]

No one cares about. This was me. He does not have that authority. He is responsible only for the flags on federal land because it's a free country. And the sovereign states of this country can decide what they do with their flags, and the sovereign citizens can decide what we do with our flags. And if we want to lower our flags for Lindsey Graham, we can do it. I appreciate that we hoe lowered their pride flag to have staff as a little bit of a troll. They did. And the American flag, both of them together, which I thought was a little bit of a. But your moving. A moving troll, you know? Yeah, exactly.

[Jon Favreau]

Moving troll.

[Jon Lovett]

But I hate when Donald Trump orders everyone to lower the flags, like, this is a free country as far as I'm concerned.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, well, on that note, after the break, love its conversation with Brian Tyler Cohen about all of this and more.

[Tommy Vietor]

Positive America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. There are things in life that you don't want to be transparent, like your swimsuit or your search history. But when it comes to your wireless billing, transparency is everything. That's why Mint Mobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gotchas. Just high speed data and reliable coverage on the T Mobile 5G network. And right now, all plans are $15 a month, even unlimited. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from 3, 6 or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. Ditch overpriced wireless With Mint Mobile, it's so easy. Sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com crooked that's mintmobile.com crooked cut your wireless bill down to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com crooked that's it. There's no catch.

[Jon Lovett]

Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 months. Plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term Only greater than 50 gigab slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability, speed and coverage vary. See mint mobile.com all new drinks are

[Ad Read Announcer]

now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold fold. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

[Tommy Vietor]

Refreshers contain caffeine.

[Jon Lovett]

Joining us now he's progressive host and author of the new book the Day how to Wield Power in a Post Trump World which is out today. YouTube's best boy, Brian Tyler Cohen. Welcome to the show.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

Love it.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Thanks for having me.

[Jon Lovett]

So you have your new book out, which we will talk about. But before we do, I wanted to get your reaction to what we're seeing right now in some right wing media. I wanna start with Tucker Carlson who has become increasingly critical of Trump. Let's roll a clip.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

You betrayed us and it's the betrayal that makes it so bitter for people like me and maybe you who voted for Trump and I campaigned for and with him, you know, it's like, really, we really believe that you were going to at least try. And in the end, it's all about cryptocurrency scams and wars for Israel. I mean, I can't believe you did that. Hiding the Epstein stuff.

[Jon Lovett]

So he goes on in that video to say that, that, that you can't even ask questions about Butler. So there's a mix of his, like, America first stuff, the anti Israel stuff, and the conspiratorial stuff in there. What do you make of Tucker's turn against Trump lately?

[Guest or Secondary Host]

I don't know that it's so much this virtuous stand as it is Tucker recognizing not where the puck is, but where the puck is going. And he can see how unpopular Trump is, how he's losing popularity even with his. In his own base. And it's because he has defied his own campaign promises. I mean, nobody forced Trump to engage in a foreign war in the Middle east after promising no new wars in the Middle East. That was him. Nobody made Trump suppress the Epstein files after they all campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. Nobody forced Trump to launch a trade war against all these foreign countries that would raise the prices of everything that was him. And so obviously that's rubbing the Republican base the wrong way because it's completely diametrically opposed to everything that Trump campaigned on. Tucker wants to retain relevance in, in that base, though. That is his audience. And so he can both give himself a little bit of independent cred by going after Trump on stuff that's already unpopular and kind of recognize that Trump is not going to be there forever, but he wants to have a longer, a longer career than, I think, what spans just Donald Trump's specific tenure in office. And I think that's. Look, he is a savvy operator. I think that what makes him a little bit more savvy than a lot of other people in that space who only recognize, okay, right now I have to tie my fortunes to Donald Trump and whatever he does, I have to blindly defer to him and that's it. And I think that that's gonna drag a lot of people down because they're only focused on today and not tomorrow.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, Tucker is a challenge for Trump because Tucker has fuck you money and seems to be pretty happy wherever he's ensconced, making his shows from his home. So he's not on the, I mean, he's on the take. He's on the take but he doesn't need Trump in the same way that say, like a bunch of other. Either media figures still feel like they need Trump or members of Congress or others in the sort of conservative ecosystem who are afraid to be on Trump's bad side in part because they don't feel like they have a, they need him, they need him, but also B, they don't feel like they have an independent trusted relationship with the base. You know, you see, you see the, the Republicans just wanted to have an event with Trump to sign the housing bill. Trump allows the housing bill to become law, but doesn't sign it as a fuck you to the Republicans because those Republicans want their event with daddy. They want to take the picture because his imprimatur on the bill does more than any words they can say. Cuz they don't have that kind of relationship. And Tucker does seem like he's in a different category.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Like their brand is just kind of glomming on to whatever Trump does. And frankly, there are no, we've seen, there are no long standing principles, there are no core beliefs or core values. It's just whatever Trump says becomes gospel for these people who are hangers on for Trump. I mean, these people were anti war during the campaign and now they're all explaining why actually what Trump is doing is completely fine. They have the ability to rein him in, they're a co equal branch of government, but instead they just day by day contract all of their autonomy over to him. And so whatever stance he adopts, whatever errant synapse fires in his brain and words fall out of his face, that becomes gospel for this gop. And you're right, Tucker doesn't abide by that same principle. He doesn't need to. It's not like Trump can post a mean tweet and end his career in the same way that he can for somebody like Bill Cassidy or John Cornyn. But really what it does is just destroy the Republican brand. But that's what Trump wants. He wants the brand to just be slavish devotion to him and whatever he says and does.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, there's also the ways in which Republican politicians, Trump media figures deal with the conspiratorial mindset in their audience, whether they ignore it, embrace it, fight against it. You even seen like right wing figures like Chris Ruffo talking about the danger of this kind of thing. You hear that in a lot of what Tucker has been doing. You also hear it in Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro. So let's just roll the clip without any introduction.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Today we are going to uncover the real murderer of Charlie Kirk.

[Jon Favreau]

It's time.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

We've been working for months on a deep and detailed investigation. It's not who you think. Today we are going to discuss who was really behind Charlie Kirk's assassination.

[Jon Lovett]

Candace Owens. So Candace Owens has obviously been saying unhinged shit about the killing of Charlie Kirk. And Candace Owens has also been at war with Ben Shapiro. I think this is his way of striking back with some parody about it. It's also coming at a time in which maybe in part because of the conspiratorial turn on the right, like Ben Shapiro's lost some relevance, lost some, some audience. What do you make of that little civil war?

[Guest or Secondary Host]

I mean, look, the reality is that when it comes to conspiracy theories online, that's the currency of the Internet. That's even more pervasive in right wing circles. But the interesting part of this is, in large part that's what Republicans tapped into as it relates to Epstein. And that brought a lot of people into the political process. It's why a lot of people voted. They believed that there was this, you know, basically upper echelon of politicians and people who can commit heinous crimes with impunity. And that gained a lot of traction. And when we saw that that was in large part what happened with the Epstein files, it backfired on Trump because now you have people who believed it, and it was largely borne out in what we saw. And Trump decided not to release anything other than half of the files, deigned to release half of the files, but continues to hold onto the other half. And so in this instance, you have people who kind of bought into what felt like a conspiracy theory. It ended up being, in large part, I mean, there were obviously elements of it that were untrue, but in large part accurate. And now it's turning against Trump because he continues to suppress these files instead of release them. So I think that's one instance in which, you know, you have a political party that is already prone to this stuff and it's gonna create a lot of, I think, disaffected voters on the right because this is where they operate, this is where they live. And now they can see that Trump has no interest in actually delivering on

[Jon Lovett]

that specific point, the Epstein files as this way of signaling that you're willing to take on the powers that be. Right? Whatever that, whatever that means. But also part of it too is the comfort of some far off enemy that is truly the ones responsible. That's a lot of what Trump does More broadly, it's this idea that what is the source of our ills? It's not structural, it's not systemic inequality or broken systems or the failure to build housing or just the ordinary, quote unquote, ordinary dangers that lurk for children everywhere, that there is some super plot of super elites and that's the real threat. Now, two things can be true, right? Like there was and is now a big cover up around Epstein. There was a network of connected people who supported this person even after he was exposed. There's clearly nefarious doings and how he got such a slap on the wrist when he was first brought up on charges. And obviously Trump has been covering up for him. But that a lot of right wing media is about this sort of comfort of like, you are the folk, you are the good people in the good communities, and the enemy is it's the immigrants or the trans people or the cabal of Jews operating a pedophilia ring, right? When like actually, like the real challenges and problems in your life are closer to home. But it's much harder to face that. And a lot of right wing media is just about stoking that feeling and telling people over and over again that like, like they're doing, hey, keep at it, keep at it. Once we get rid of these trans swimmers and Jewish cabals, then everything's gonna be coming up America.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

You know, we've seen this as a recurring theme for so long. I mean, I remember elections where it was migrant caravans and then it was gay marriage and then it was trans people. And it's, you know, they're really effective at finding some boogeyman to vilify as the source of all of society's woes. I think that they're gonna run up on a wall in this election cycle because obviously they're all trying to do it again. You know, they, they run the same playbooks over and over and over again. In some ways, Republican elections from the early 2000s look identical to what they're saying today. But they ran an entire election cycle based on culture wars in 2024 and trying to perpetuate this idea that, okay, if only we can get they thems out of swimming, then everything will be solved. And in fact, now these people, the Republicans, have full control of government. They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the White House, they even won the popular vote on that message. And what do they have to show for it? There's no Democrats in control to gum up the works. So what Republicans have to show for it right now is a country that is sicker, poorer, and hungrier than it's been before. A country where prices are not going down, they're going up. Inflation's not going down, it's going up. Health care is not going up. More expansive it's been contracted. Food assistance is the same. We have not fewer wars, but more. The Epstein files are not released. They're being suppressed. And so, given the fact that there's no Democrats to blame for any of this, Republicans are gonna have to confront the fact, and especially their base, confront the fact that, hey, maybe if I keep voting on these culture war issues, especially issues where, like, 10 people in the NCAA are at the, at the heart of our entire national discourse, then that's not gonna result in better outcomes for regular Americans. That's just gonna be more cultural issues that allow Republicans to consolidate power and then just do with that power what they want.

[Jon Lovett]

And Trump, kind of unable to grapple with the actual problems he claimed he was going to fix, is distracted by the reflecting pool in the ballroom. He's doing pit stops on the lawn. He's doing challenger campaigning. He's doing the kinds of things you do when you're out of power, complaining about the things you complain about when you're out of power. But of course, he, you know, he has the controls. So now let's talk about what happens if, and I believe they're called Democrats. That's how you pronounce it. I've never, I've only read it. I haven't heard it said. I've never seen one.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

But these Democrats, very elusive, an elusive creature. Yes.

[Jon Lovett]

These Democrats, and they're, I think they're nocturnal.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

No, but, but their main weapon is the strongly worded letters.

[Jon Lovett]

Strongly worded letters. So. So look, the hope, right, is that we can win the House. The Senate is not off the table. I want to get to what you're talking about, what you hope for Democrats in a post Trump world. But before we get there, Democrats would have to model what it looks like for them to be in power if they win the House. What do you think? A Democratic House majority that has control of committees and subpoena powers, but can't legislate without getting things signed by Trump. What does that look like to you?

[Guest or Secondary Host]

It looks like investigating what we can investigate right now, which is the rampant corruption that we're seeing across the government. I mean, my God, Trump's kids are taking in millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, DoD contracts. We're seeing short sales, five minutes before some major White House announcement that makes somebody a millionaire 100 times over, we're seeing these foreign investments via World Liberty Financial into Trump's meme coins and stablecoins and cryptocurrency. All of this stuff is happening in broad daylight. It's clear that it is beyond illegal. But there is this sense that crime is just legal in the Trump era so long as a Republican commits it or you're willing to pay Trump the requisite amount, you know, a million dollars to get a pardon or whatever you need. So I think that in this rare sliver of time where hopefully when Democrats have the gavels, they'll use that time. Obviously, you can't legislate, but you can use that time to investigate this stuff. And by getting a lot of this stuff out there and starting these investigations, hopefully you pave the way for the DOJ to pick up, a Democratic DOJ to pick up where they've left off. I mean, the January 6th committee, in large part was able to inform the prosecutions that came afterwards. Now, I would argue that those prosecutions came too little, too little, too late. And the fecklessness of Merrick Garland's DOJ is in large part why we're here. But the reality is that we can use this time not only to win the messaging war, because this stuff obviously resonates. I mean, restoring the rule of law against a corrupt government is in large part what Trump himself ran on against the Democrats, except he's doing it 1,000 times bigger. But it also has some practical effects, because then you can have a DOJ that uses a lot of what Congress was able to find on these fact finding missions to actually move forward and prosecute some of this illegality so we can get back to a world where law and order actually exists.

[Jon Lovett]

So there's a lot of polling about views of Democrats and Democrats. It is a deeply tarnished brand. It is unpopular, obviously, among Republicans, but also Democratic voters are deeply frustrated by the Democratic Party. We've seen insurgent campaigns defeating incumbents. What does it look like to have a Democratic Party after Trump that you think meets the moment and meets the expectations of the most engaged Democratic voters?

[Guest or Secondary Host]

So I think if Trump has shown us anything, it's that a lot of the institutions that we take as sacrosanct are not. I mean, Trump has barreled through everything. He doesn't listen to the law, the Constitution, the courts, attorneys, any other branch of government. He just does whatever he wants. I mean, you would not find a Democrat ever who would get into office and then raise the East Wing of the White House to the ground. It just wouldn't happen. There's so much deference to norms and traditions and institutions. Trump has shown that if there's a will, there's a way. Now, he's done it for self enriching. He's done it so that he can enshrine the Oval Office in gold and build a ballroom for himself and launder money through foreign countries into his own pockets and his family's pockets and build up his real estate portfolio. So he's doing it for bad reasons. My argument is that Democrats should look at what Trump's doing and use that for virtuous reasons to deliver Medicare for all. It is long past time that we have universal health care in the richest country in the world. It's crazy that we don't. To combat climate change, the existential issue of our time to expand voting rights, especially at a time when they're contracting across the country amid the fall of the Voting Rights Act. There are so many things that we can do that we allow these, these norms and traditions to block us from doing. But I think we have to get past this idea that even the smallest speed bump is going to be an obstacle for us. Our Democratic officials are not in government so that they can pay deference to the institutions of government. They're there so that they can deliver outcomes for people. And if that means they have to find a way to circumvent these hurdles, these processes, then so be it. Because the reality is, I think we're gonna have a small window of time where we already know that there was a largely disillusioned with Democrats block of voters. That's why they went over to Republicans. Now we have a disillusioned bloc of Republican voters because, you know, Trump lied about everything that he was gonna do. So already trusting government is at extreme lows. We have a second. I think, I believe we're gonna have a second bite of the apple here where we can bring people back into this tent. But if we don't deliver, if it's good enough that Democrats can just notch symbolic victories and get caught trying before eventually something inevitably goes wrong, then I think you're just gonna lose large swaths of the population. And when you have an electorate that's that disaffected, I think that's the conditions in which autocracy thrives.

[Jon Lovett]

I think it does start to become about what it looks like. I agree in the sense that Democrats need to take from Trump a willingness to push Harder against the lawyers, basically. And we have better lawyers than they have. But you got to sometimes, you know, push your lawyers. Fine. Like, I think Democratic administrations have been too differential to the lawyers, especially around questions that are kind of, I would say more like philosophical rather than like kind of on the page. But at the same time, the Supreme Court has had, has given him immunity, which was a terrible decision. They've ruled with him more often than they haven't. But he has been stymied by the courts in, in part, especially the lower courts, in part because they have been so ham fisted and so aggressive in trying to do things that are just run against the plain language of the law. So I, I do want us to learn the lesson from Trump that we can be more aggressive and move faster and try things based on what we believe are like solid legal grounds, even if they might be questioned by the courts. But at the same time, he's cheating. We're trying to prove the game's worth playing, right? Like we're playing against cheaters. But we believe in the sport, we like the rules of the sport. We're trying to make sure people, like we're watching them get away with murder and bribing the refs and all the rest. But we're trying to make a case to people that democracy is a game worth playing. As you have in the book, in the conversation with President Obama, we have a tougher job than they do. In part, we do believe in that. Part of Democratic practice is understanding that laws are made by people and not one person deciding what the law is.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Right. I'm definitely not advocating for tearing down a democracy. I'm advocating for making it work for people, making it a more efficient process. I mean, you've spoken at length whether it's something so grand granular as housing right here where we are in Los Angeles, or whether it's these big issues like Obama's ultimate goal was to get single payer health care. That's what the ACA was initially viewed as being. So I think that in either one of those scenarios, either when you're looking at a local level or big ticket ideas on a federal level, it's not necessarily a matter of tearing government down. It's a matter of making it, making it work for actual people and delivering outcomes so that you're not just allowing yourself to be stymied by what Republicans view as the smallest speed bumps ever and what Democrats view as just immovable impasses.

[Jon Lovett]

Speaking of immovable, they prop Mitch McConnell up, holding up the newspaper like He's a hostage. Do you find that reassuring? Like, are we meant to? He's not speaking. He's just a statement. There's a picture of him. He is alive. I don't think that's the only question people have for their senators. What do you think's going on with Mitch?

[Guest or Secondary Host]

I'm really skeptical of conspiracy theories, but, I mean, he looked really good in that picture.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

I think if you've just been unconscious for like three weeks, maybe you would have less color in your face. So look, again, I try not to spread.

[Jon Lovett]

We don't wanna do conspiracy. We're responsible people. We're responsible people.

[Brian Tyler Cohen]

But.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

But we live in an era where it's easy to fake stuff. And he looked damn good in that hospital bed. So I'll just leave it at that.

[Jon Lovett]

We'll just leave it at that. I think conspiracy theories thrive online because it rewards people who are. It rewards kind of paranoid and kind of cynical sentiments. But it also, I think, speaks to something about this era where, like, I don't think you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to have a lot of questions about a Sen. A senator checking into the hospital on June 14. There being audio from the dispatch saying someone was unconscious and in cardiac arrest. The only statements are coming from his staff. And then the only sign of life is a single picture posted without any video or comment directly from the senator. So part of it is it's the Internet makes people not trustworthy, but so do these fucking people.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, if you're a Republican, you can't be surprised when this is the environment you have to contend with. The same environment that you in large part created and nurtured is now kind of turning against, well, one of their own in Mitch McConnell.

[Jon Lovett]

And hopefully this fall we can defeat some of them and then eventually have power and then we can wield that power. Brian, thanks for joining. The book is the Day how to Wield Power in a Post Trump World. It is out today. Everybody should pick it up and everybody should subscribe to Brian's YouTube where he is getting good information to people and competing with, as we're all doing, competing with the right on the Internet to try to, you know, get some. Get some wins in that algorithm. Brian, good to see you.

[Guest or Secondary Host]

That's it. Love it. Thanks so much.

[Jon Favreau]

Thanks to Brian Tyler Cohen for coming on the show. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Farah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn and Adrian. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hefcote, Jordan Kantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelavie, David Toles, Mia Kellman, Ryan Young and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Ad Read Announcer]

All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba to crafted sodas like like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

[Tommy Vietor]

Refreshers contain caffeine.